The Diadochi are much more fun than Rome and Carthage

[Basileus2]

Duh, the game is called Strategos: Diadochi, not Imperator: Rome or Rab Mahanet: Chanani

 

[Rabid]

I think the core of the problem with Rome is that Italia and Greece are so populated and assimilation is so quick along with the ability to integrate that you can easily levy a lot of these pops. The game is still a race to acquire pops.

As Rome holding all Italia and Greece I could easily have 7,000 -8000 pops 100 yrs into the game. Whereas when playing as the Persian empire from the Indus to the Mediterranean I would have around the same. This isn’t realistic as Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley combined would be far more populated than the Balkans and Italy combined.

We have civ value but I think autonomy (not the policy) needs to be introduced. So a Roman and Greek strength is their ability to centralise while extremely populated areas in the East have higher autonomy and can’t use their extremely high number of pops along the way.

I think Maurya in particular should be extremely populated and rich, but suffer from high autonomy and political instability. Whereas the Greeks have good central government control with low autonomy but lower pops. Rome similar to the Greeks but with a very high %levy.

India is intentionally severely lower in pops than it should be to prevent Maurya from running away with world domination even moreso than they already are able, so it's best to ignore them entirely in these sorts of considerations - if it's ever sufficiently difficult to keep a massive empire stable then India can have its pops increased to a reasonable level but until then I think that it's necessary to have India in this state.

I'm not sure if the same sort of logic is also applied to Iran and Mesopotamia to weaken the Seleucids

 

[Rhaegar1]

I'm still not happy with PDS naming their big antiquity game (hopefully series) so Roman centric. I get that Romans sell but with the perfect starting date they've chosen I'd rather have had something generic (cities and empires) or something pretentious (Imperian Antiqua) that at least was broad enough to make clear that this is not a Roman centric game. The Diadochi wars are for a great part of the game a central piece of conflict right in the center of the map.

 

[AggaWackTan]

India is intentionally severely lower in pops than it should be to prevent Maurya from running away with world domination even moreso than they already are able,

Yeah they definitely are. It's just Rome feel like a European Maurya. More diplomatic options and vassal rework are needed to give more consideration how to expand than just having a higher pops with higher levy making it a steamtrain.#

I get that Romans sell but with the perfect starting date they've chosen I'd rather have had something generic (cities and empires) or something pretentious (Imperian Antiqua) that at least was broad enough to make clear that this is not a Roman centric game.

Yeah definitely. I'm pretty obsessed with Rome so when I heard Paradox were making 'Imperator Rome' I was excited. But if it was called 'Ancient Empires' or something I think I actually wouldn't have been so disappointed at release. The best way to play the game is actually to recreate small kingdoms on a beautiful map with less well known tags, when playing this way I love the game. Currently the game doesn't offer that Cicero vs Caesar, Patrician vs pleb experience at all, or even diploatic situations like bequathing Pergamon to Rome or the Cimbri invasions, but hopefully that changes. I'm optimistic

 

[The_Sound_Of_Violence]

I'm still not happy with PDS naming their big antiquity game (hopefully series) so Roman centric. I get that Romans sell but with the perfect starting date they've chosen I'd rather have had something generic (cities and empires) or something pretentious (Imperian Antiqua) that at least was broad enough to make clear that this is not a Roman centric game. The Diadochi wars are for a great part of the game a central piece of conflict right in the center of the map.

I would have loved that the title referred to the Mediterranean Sea, which is the actual center of the game. Maybe “Η Άσπρη Θάλασσα” to confuse the casual Roman fans even more.

 

[Shogun96]

Slightly unrelated note, but I wish they added plagues and diseases to the game (ck2's dlc is a good example). Then you could tweak some numbers to make it more likely for plagues to spawn in densely populated provinces. I think this would be a good way of giving big empires something more to deal with and to weaken them temporarily.

Think of the Plague of Perikles or the Antonine Plague if you want some historical examples.

 

[Battlex]

Slightly unrelated note, but I wish they added plagues and diseases to the game (ck2's dlc is a good example). Then you could tweak some numbers to make it more likely for plagues to spawn in densely populated provinces. I think this would be a good way of giving big empires something more to deal with and to weaken them temporarily.

Think of the Plague of Perikles or the Antonine Plague if you want some historical examples.

CK2 dlc is not a good example, but plague mechanics would be very useful, just to give maintenance costs via events to aquaducts and granaries if nothing else

 

[Shogun96]

CK2 dlc is not a good example, but plague mechanics would be very useful, just to give maintenance costs via events to aquaducts and granaries if nothing else

Well I didn't mean to port ck2s mechanics to imperator, but things like recurring diseases and rare but deadly plague epidemics would be a nice addition to Imperator.

In any case, yeah plagues should be implemented at some point. It's a bit weird playing a game set in antiquity without having to worry about sanitation and diseases

 

[blackbirdgriffi]

I'd argue that for the time being, Syracuse is the more interesting and challenging power in the Western Mediterranean.

Indeed, they are really interesting (and they are a kingdom) and can easily challenge rome and carthage (or pick a side), given their central position tho they would heavily benefit from a trade mechanic (but then again so would everybody)

 

[Rhaegar1]

I would have loved that the title referred to the Mediterranean Sea, which is the actual center of the game. Maybe “Η Άσπρη Θάλασσα” to confuse the casual Roman fans even more.

I really don't agree that the Mediterranean sea is the center of the game. It was in EU:Rome but adding India threw that out of the window. The center of the game is not an area but building an empire/civilisation in antiquity. That's why I'm pretty sure we will see China added to the game sooner or later as well.

 

[AggaWackTan]

I really don't agree that the Mediterranean sea is the center of the game. It was in EU:Rome but adding India threw that out of the window. The center of the game is not an area but building an empire/civilisation in antiquity. That's why I'm pretty sure we will see China added to the game sooner or later as well.

China was already an empire with tons of cities so they’d play exactly like Maurya, super rich and super easy. They wouldn’t add anything to the game. If they added the Zhou or the Qin factions they’d already have most of their cities built for them which is what you want to do in the game. So I don’t expect to see them at all. If we got a trade and diplomacy rework with internal politics then maybe, but as of now with the way the game works I don’t think China is something that we should expect to ever see.

 

[kpaw]

Yes. You are correct - sorry if I came off as overly critical. The game ends in 27 BC I think; the same year Augustus ends the republic. My point was that it’s all so close to the end that it should function more as an end game crisis than a main staple of gameplay that potentially slows Rome. I think they initially intended civil wars to function as an end game conflict like this, but it never really plays out that way. Civil wars are a much bigger threat early game than end game, which just feels weird.

The main conflict you should be dealing with through most of the game (as Rome) is the conflict of the orders though - it’s a huge political fight stretching over centuries and ultimately setting the stage for the downfall of the republic (given how far conservatives would go to prevent reform - even murdering a tribune). There’s tons of content to mine for gameplay, especially if Rome had proper offices and a cursus honorum like everyone has been wanting since the present system was first announced. But more broadly it would be great to see more class conflict and civil strife. Add the caste system to India while you’re at it.

The social war would also be a good one. They created an integration system - this could be a way to solve the problem of same group minority cultures. Right now you are disincentivized to integrate minorities of your culture group. Maybe modeling the social strife caused by this in particular, given how similar you are, could act as a counterweight offering a reason to integrate your sister cultures. Maybe you could appeal to oppressed cultures when at war with another country, like Hannibal did to the Romans and the Romans did to the Macedonians and Seleukids (claiming to be defenders of the Greeks). And it could be fuel for tons of events.

Honestly I would just love to see more dynamic historical events. They really flesh out a country and make it feel different.

Yes you are right. There's definitely the two potential sources of internal strife. Politics and power struggles between key figures, and wider unrest from populations and culture groups.

The political side is definitely where it's weak at the moment. You're right that a system modelling the cursus honorum could be very good. You would be forced to interact more with your senators and other ambitious powerful figures. Their rise to power shouldn't be unavoidable, but should be difficult to manage, and actually force you into decisions. One easy step in the right direction would be to make the government positions and governorships more impactful and harder to change. The statesmanship system mildly discourages you from shuffling them around all the time, but who really cares if it's 0.2% or 0.3% bonus? So you just swap them around, throw in a couple of bribes or free hands when you're in a pinch and you're done. If there were more meaningful bonuses and genuine consequences for removing people from office it could boost that element of the game a lot with very little effort. It wouldn't be perfect, but at least you'd be making actual choices based on the pros and cons.

There is definitely the makings of some decent stuff in there already. I had a governor of a minor province who was too corrupt so I decided to put him on trial. I had a high chance of success, but suddenly at the end of the trial the governor of Magna Graecia came in and took his side, and I could either pay him several hundred to go away or risk it. It kicked off a minor civil war (which was a bit too easy to put down), and it was a fun moment where a powerful figure forced me into a decision, I made it and suffered the consequences.

The current culture system works mostly ok but could be improved quite a bit with some relatively minor tweaks, I think. To me it would make more sense that you don't just start assimilating straight away, but have a series of decisions you can make to keep culture groups happy and utilise them in various ways. A decision that allows them to be levied, or gives them political representation etc. And then the final stage would be something like integration and assimilation into your main culture. I think that could still be modelled on the current system and wouldn't need a total overhaul? And then you could have events like the Social War where groups are dissatisfied with their current position and demand change.

 

[AggaWackTan]

The current culture system works mostly ok but could be improved quite a bit with some relatively minor tweaks, I think. To me it would make more sense that you don't just start assimilating straight away, but have a series of decisions you can make to keep culture groups happy and utilise them in various ways. A decision that allows them to be levied, or gives them political representation etc. And then the final stage would be something like integration and assimilation into your main culture. I think that could still be modelled on the current system and wouldn't need a total overhaul? And then you could have events like the Social War where groups are dissatisfied with their current position and demand change.

Agree with this last part. It would be better if integrating was the first step, assimilation second rather than the either or one we have now. And you can leave cultures as integrated but they might want more rights. Assimilating should require extra effort through the colony decision.

Unintegrated will pay taxes but never assimilate.

 

[kpaw]

I think they already do that: now playing as Rome you don t have a game where there is no disloyal character. Having provincial levy generals go solo because of disloyalty is fairly common for a lot of players, i m not quite sure that is fun (for me at least not so much). Just bribing them / granting a holding temperarely solves it, I ve not seen a way to try to make them more loyal long term other than improving the happiness of the family he is in.

Then there is the automatic mechanism that the families will object the governors you pick that are not part of one of the major aristocratic families, if you don t you lose 50 support points of one of their political parties.

The problem is that you as a player for Rome are really not that immersersed in the game politics, since you re playing the country instead of a family or political party (like in rome total war). Why would you care which party/family is in power? You don t lose anything or gain anything, you are more spectator than being involved. In away you play more like a "god" rather than a human element that is vulnerable to human politics in the game.

I m not sure i quite like the way they did it, compomising on putting the best person for the job with accomodating the strongest political families is quite realistic. The question is if it is fun? I as a player rather put the best man on the best job and have the politics resolved in another way. I think the game needs something extra to get the player who s playing as a Roman republic more involved.

That's absolutely a fair point that the priority should be making it enjoyable and fun. You certainly don't want to create systems that feel like tedious busy work.

But I do think that the reason it currently feels like busy work and not that fun is precisely because it doesn't feel that impactful. Your general goes disloyal and you just pay him a bit of money to fix it. It feels a bit pointless when it should feel like something you need to pre-empt, or at least is genuinely threatening to your stability.

Of course it shouldn't turn into constant punishment of the player, but wouldn't it be more fun and engaging to create these interesting narrative developments as you suffer genuine crises that you need to resolve? Rather than just pressing a button or two to make it go away.

I suppose part of the problem is it depends what players are after, and there is no right answer for what you should prefer. Do you want a more narrative experience driven by political strife and the accompanying setbacks? Or do you want something where, as you say, you're closer to a 'god', and the focus is on using your resources efficiently, while the human element is managed more abstractly?

 

[Rhaegar1]

China was already an empire with tons of cities so they’d play exactly like Maurya, super rich and super easy. They wouldn’t add anything to the game. If they added the Zhou or the Qin factions they’d already have most of their cities built for them which is what you want to do in the game. So I don’t expect to see them at all. If we got a trade and diplomacy rework with internal politics then maybe, but as of now with the way the game works I don’t think China is something that we should expect to ever see.

China was right in the middle of the warring states period which took (historically) a century or so in the game before it was united by the Qin so I honestly don't know how it would be the same as the Maurya. Qin might be a stronger start position while some other states will make a much bigger challenge. Plenty of diversity to be sure.. Tthe addition of China should be accompanied by a decently unique China specific government form and ideally a rework of steppe barbarian gameplay as well but if that's the case then China, Xiongnu and a Yuezhi->indo-scythian playthroughs would all make a nice and neat gamplay experiences where the last one also involves a nice tie in between the current map and China.

 

[hansnoetig]

This has been commented on a TON of times since 2.0; the problem isn’t Rome, it’s Epirus. Epirus is far FAR too weak. They should start on par with rome, not by nerfing Rome but by buffing Epirus. Rome is really irrelevant to their problems. They can’t even survive let alone conquer their immediate neighbors to the north and south. They’re usually dead long before Rome shows up.

Epirus isn't the problem either, it has a tough start, sure, that's what makes it so fun to play as. But as the player, you are on par with Rome after a bit more than 20 years of (very) aggressive expansion in Greece and Macedonia, bankrolling conquest through more conquest. After 30-50 years, the player is almost as much a bully as he would be while playing Rome.

The problem is that the AI can never pull something like this off, because it will never attack a stronger foe, even when he is losing hard in a diadochi war, ever. Therefor nothing that enabled Epirus/Phyrros to fight Rome happens, and they are just a convenient excuse to start the conquest of the greek world. Same with Carthage, once Rome gets Italy under its boot the outcome is certain, because there is no Hannibal. Maybe event troops (AI only) would help, but then it has to be scripted and things get railroaded.

Majors in strategy games will always be a bit boring, minors just take a bit longer to get there. I'd actually like AI Rome to be a lot more aggressive after they get Italy, because they provide such a good endboss. Other than that, i can only see one thing (outside of "house rules") to keep majors interesting, and i hate it irl: Politics. For example the marian reforms, have an event-chain that starts after certain conditions, has actual ingame characters involved (so you can care about them) and leads to actual change and a meaningful decision (better army/more manpower/loyalty issues/enables dictatorship vs the opposite). Every republic meeting the conditions could have that, and something similar for Monarchies too (but first Kings need to be able to lead legions). Or cultures, they shouldn't integrate much, unless some ingame character starts an event-chain for that culture-group that leads to debate/conflict between characters and in the end change (with a possible "social war" or heavily disgruntled maybe rioting integrated pops). Or changing laws, can't just force it before you have enough influence/approval of important characters, to make the factions mean smth outside of "occasionally gives some tyranny".

I should stop thinking about it, or i'll dream about internal missions that run alongside the normal ones, focussed more on characters and politics with at least some missions exclusive to each other (the no marian reforms, no Caesar thing) that shape the constitution of your empire. Could make the civilization progress of tribals a lot more interesting too.

 

[goodcigar]

I think Leagues should be reworked into something like the Federations of Stellaris. This would help not only the Gallic tribes but also the many Greek polities. This would probably require the mission trees in Magna Graecia to be adjusted, however.​

Yes Leagues are currently very basic and underdeveloped. I usually play as small Greek States like Athens and it's very disappointing. There are multiple problems with them. Leagues are completely static. There's no way to get a nation to leave a League. And there's no way to get a nation to leave a League and join yours. Leagues also don't have any kind of internal mechanics and there's only one kind of League. The League leader never changes. You can't name your League.

Leagues should have names, especially the historical ones. It should be possible to change the League leader. Greek nations were often forced to leave a League and join another in peace deals. Nations who were historically in Leagues together should have a small relations boost. There should be internal rules for Leagues. Both the Athenians and Spartans had their own Leagues. The Athenian Delian League was originally a cooperative kind of League. But then they turned it into more of a hegemonic League where the Athenians were like dictators. They made everyone pay them a ton of money. They moved the League treasury from a neutral place to Athens itself. They attacked anyone who wanted to leave. They made the League members join their offensive wars (I think). Leagues basically need to have their own government.

Paradox needs to read the history about the subject and develop the mechanics based on that.

I just think Rome is very overpowered and overpopulated too. I think the pops should be reduced but the Roman Heritage should have a huge levy of like 15-20%. Like Rome definitely wasn’t as big as Babylon/ Pataliputra at this time but in game it rivals them. I wouldn’t be against giving the AI an extra free fort but overall I think Rome has been deliberately overpowered as there’s few vassal designs in place to resemble how they actually dominated the peninsula, so the workaround is that they just outright conquer it. Playing against Rome I find this is fine as they’re scary like the ottomans in EU4, but playing as Rome is quite boring.

Playing as Rome should be a lot harder though, and the ticks per day increased so we don’t run out of time conquering.

As for Epirus I think they should get a big legion discount, (and Pyrrhus leading it)

Yeah only like 50% of Italy was directly controlled by Rome. The rest were Socii and Latini. People who became allies voluntarily or were forced to become allies through war. Eventually they rebelled in the Social War because they wanted citizenship. And yes I think it makes historical sense to give Rome a Levy boost. I think Rome mobilized more of its population for war than most other nations but I could be wrong.

Tribal confederations is something that must be implemented sooner or later

A Vercingetorix type confederation would be awesome. A lot of "barbarian" nations did that I think. The Gauls, the Germans, the Britons when they were trying to fight Rome. Maybe distinguish between a normal Confederation and an Emergency Confederation?

I think the core of the problem with Rome is that Italia and Greece are so populated and assimilation is so quick along with the ability to integrate that you can easily levy a lot of these pops. The game is still a race to acquire pops.

As Rome holding all Italia and Greece I could easily have 7,000 -8000 pops 100 yrs into the game. Whereas when playing as the Persian empire from the Indus to the Mediterranean I would have around the same. This isn’t realistic as Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley combined would be far more populated than the Balkans and Italy combined.

We have civ value but I think autonomy (not the policy) needs to be introduced. So a Roman and Greek strength is their ability to centralise while extremely populated areas in the East have higher autonomy and can’t use their extremely high number of pops along the way.

I think Maurya in particular should be extremely populated and rich, but suffer from high autonomy and political instability. Whereas the Greeks have good central government control with low autonomy but lower pops. Rome similar to the Greeks but with a very high %levy.

Darren from the channel Republic of Play commented about the culture/assimilation changes that were made to the game in update 1.5. He basically said they are historically backwards and I agree.

I'm still not happy with PDS naming their big antiquity game (hopefully series) so Roman centric. I get that Romans sell but with the perfect starting date they've chosen I'd rather have had something generic (cities and empires) or something pretentious (Imperian Antiqua) that at least was broad enough to make clear that this is not a Roman centric game. The Diadochi wars are for a great part of the game a central piece of conflict right in the center of the map.

I'm not happy they named it Rome and didn't properly and realistically simulate the internal politics and government of Rome lol.

 

[Battlex]

Yes you are right. There's definitely the two potential sources of internal strife. Politics and power struggles between key figures, and wider unrest from populations and culture groups.

The political side is definitely where it's weak at the moment. You're right that a system modelling the cursus honorum could be very good. You would be forced to interact more with your senators and other ambitious powerful figures. Their rise to power shouldn't be unavoidable, but should be difficult to manage, and actually force you into decisions. One easy step in the right direction would be to make the government positions and governorships more impactful and harder to change. The statesmanship system mildly discourages you from shuffling them around all the time, but who really cares if it's 0.2% or 0.3% bonus? So you just swap them around, throw in a couple of bribes or free hands when you're in a pinch and you're done. If there were more meaningful bonuses and genuine consequences for removing people from office it could boost that element of the game a lot with very little effort. It wouldn't be perfect, but at least you'd be making actual choices based on the pros and cons.

There is definitely the makings of some decent stuff in there already. I had a governor of a minor province who was too corrupt so I decided to put him on trial. I had a high chance of success, but suddenly at the end of the trial the governor of Magna Graecia came in and took his side, and I could either pay him several hundred to go away or risk it. It kicked off a minor civil war (which was a bit too easy to put down), and it was a fun moment where a powerful figure forced me into a decision, I made it and suffered the consequences.

The current culture system works mostly ok but could be improved quite a bit with some relatively minor tweaks, I think. To me it would make more sense that you don't just start assimilating straight away, but have a series of decisions you can make to keep culture groups happy and utilise them in various ways. A decision that allows them to be levied, or gives them political representation etc. And then the final stage would be something like integration and assimilation into your main culture. I think that could still be modelled on the current system and wouldn't need a total overhaul? And then you could have events like the Social War where groups are dissatisfied with their current position and demand change.

Something I haven't really experienced in my games are riots in the capital, do they currently happen? Also civil wars I feel should give you the option to play as either side, so as Caesar you can take Rome bloodlessly rather than starting with it.
Revolts got changed so they could happen whenever, rather than needing a certain amount of the kingdom being disloyal as in previous patches, perhaps you could have disloyal pretenders be used as a figure head for the rebellion E. G. One of the selecuid Kings appointing his brother as Co King, only for his brother to then nick all of Anatolia mid war with Egypt.

 

[Argead33]

The devs put a lot of effort into the Diadochi kingdoms and it shows. The post Alexander Hellenic world is essentially an ancient Royal Rumble where anything goes. The main Diadochi factions have a lot of customization with unique units, missions, cases belli, etc. So you can play dozens of campaigns with different factions and get different outcomes.

 

[kpaw]

Something I haven't really experienced in my games are riots in the capital, do they currently happen? Also civil wars I feel should give you the option to play as either side, so as Caesar you can take Rome bloodlessly rather than starting with it.
Revolts got changed so they could happen whenever, rather than needing a certain amount of the kingdom being disloyal as in previous patches, perhaps you could have disloyal pretenders be used as a figure head for the rebellion E. G. One of the selecuid Kings appointing his brother as Co King, only for his brother to then nick all of Anatolia mid war with Egypt.

An interesting idea of choosing a side in the civil war. It strikes me that risks becoming easily abusable though? Just avoid this devastating civil war by switching to the stronger side! I know that as much as possible things should be up to the player, but there is a multiplayer community so balance does have to come into consideration somewhere.

I certainly think revolts should carry more risk than they do at the moment. I am not sure about them being quite as random as it sounds like you are suggesting, though. They do need to be something you can interact with and see coming, even if they are difficult or even impossible to avoid. If you just lose half your country with zero warning it will be annoying and punishing rather than exciting and fun.

Something similar to the EU4 disasters system maybe? Not necessarily a ticking counter, but at least having factors that drive you towards a civil war/disaster, and you are aware that these are in play, even if the exact outcome or timing is unpredictable.